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Friday, November 7, 2025

Polaris of Enlightenment

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https://nordictimes.com/tech/8-ways-to-fight-for-privacy-today/

Tech

8 Ways to Fight for Privacy Today

Mass surveillance

Naomi Brockwell

How you can make an impact.

Updated December 21, 2024, Published December 19, 2024 – By Naomi Brockwell
We do not yield to the mass surveillance machine.
5 minute read

Last week, we published the Priv/Acc Manifesto, and I was deeply moved by the outpouring of responses from people eager to take action. So many of you reached out, asking, “How can I help?”

The threat to privacy is obvious—relentless surveillance from governments, corporations, and bad actors alike. Countless bills trying to ban end-to-end encryption and mandate back doors. A sea of complacency from people who have been tricked into thinking privacy is about hiding, instead of about consent.

But the path to meaningful action isn’t always clear.

The good news is that everyone, regardless of background, has a role to play in safeguarding privacy. Whether you’re a coder building better tools, an educator raising awareness, an advocate pushing for change, or simply someone who values personal freedom, there are practical steps you can take to make a difference.

In this newsletter, I want to share some of the ways you can contribute to this critical fight.

#1 Lead by example

The easiest way to contribute is by making deliberate choices about the products and services you use. Switching to privacy-respecting tools not only protects your data, but also sends a powerful market signal that privacy matters. When you choose privacy-focused companies, you help them thrive, fostering the development of even better tools. On the flip side, continuing to use platforms that harvest our data undermines privacy-focused alternatives, pushing them out of the market.

Here are a handful of my favorite tools, but our channel features hundreds of videos showcasing great alternatives you can explore:

  • Messaging: Signal
  • Web Browsing: Brave Browser
  • VPNs: Mullvad VPN
  • Email: ProtonMail and Tutanota
  • Productivity: CryptPad and LibreOffice

#2 Push Back Against Cultural Norms

The phrase "I have nothing to hide" has become a lazy justification for dismissing privacy. It’s time to reframe the conversation. Privacy isn’t about secrecy – it’s about consent. It’s about having the right to choose who gets access to our data and rejecting the idea that valuing privacy is something to be ashamed of.

Privacy protects whistleblowers, activists, and everyday individuals from surveillance and coercion. When someone parrots “nothing to hide,” remind them that privacy safeguards freedom, creativity, and autonomy. Changing this mindset is essential to making privacy a societal priority.

#3 User Manuals and Educational Awareness

You don’t need to be technical to make a huge impact. Writing clear, accessible guides for privacy tools is one of the most valuable ways to help. Blogs with beginner-friendly tutorials or personal experiences using privacy tools contribute to a growing reservoir of educational material for the community. Translating tutorials into other languages can expand their reach even further.

Even super simple tutorials—like explaining that Gmail can read your emails—can be eye-opening for many people. Education is a powerful way to build awareness, and your efforts might help someone take their first step toward reclaiming their privacy.

#4 Contribute to Open-Source Projects

For those with technical expertise, contributing to open-source privacy projects is one of the most effective ways to support the cause. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) tools like Tor, GrapheneOS, and VeraCrypt are essential for people worldwide, but these projects are often critically underfunded and under-resourced.

Developers can help by building features or fixing bugs, while researchers can perform security audits to identify vulnerabilities. Remember the Heartbleed vulnerability? It was a major flaw in SSL, a cornerstone of internet security, that went undetected for years—illustrating the need for more eyes on open-source projects. Even small contributions, like reviewing code, can make a huge difference.

#5 Test Privacy Tools and Provide Feedback

For privacy tools to succeed, they need to be user-friendly and accessible to everyone—not just tech enthusiasts. By testing privacy platforms and sharing constructive feedback, you can help developers improve default settings and refine the overall user experience (UX). These small adjustments can make tools more intuitive, significantly boosting adoption among non-technical users.

Even if you’re not a coder, your contributions—like testing tools, reporting bugs, or improving documentation—are invaluable to open-source projects. Developers rely on user input to ensure their tools work for everyone, making your efforts critical to advancing privacy.

#6 Financial Support

Financial support is vital for building a robust ecosystem of privacy tools. Many open-source projects rely on donations to survive, and businesses building privacy tools need customers to remain sustainable. FOSS ensures that privacy tools are accessible to everyone, but if you can afford to donate or pay for premium versions, your support keeps these tools available for those who need them most.

#7 Drive Change From Within

If you work for a tech company, advocate for privacy-by-design principles—embedding privacy into products from the ground up. Push for policies like data minimization and transparency, or encourage your organization to invest in privacy research. Cutting-edge technologies like zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption are redefining what’s possible in privacy-preserving data analysis. Supporting innovation in these areas can have a profound impact on the future of privacy.

#8 Engage in Policy Advocacy

Governments frequently pass laws regulating technology without fully understanding their implications. Your voice can make a difference by shaping these policies to prevent harmful consequences. Push back against attempts to ban privacy tools or mandate backdoors, ensuring that the most vulnerable in society always have a way to protect themselves.

Supporting organizations like the EFF or other advocacy groups is another great way to get involved. These groups lobby for digital rights, educate the public, and fight back against policies that fuel the surveillance state. Together, we can help ensure that privacy remains a fundamental right.

The Power of Community

Privacy advocacy is about more than safeguarding our own information—it’s about defending the fundamental rights that underpin a free and just society. It ensures that those on the front lines—whistleblowers, activists, journalists, and others fighting for change—are equipped with the protection they need to carry out their vital work.

Every time you choose a privacy-respecting tool, educate someone about the importance of privacy, or contribute to an open-source project, you’re strengthening the movement.

Privacy isn’t about having something to hide—it’s about having the freedom to live, think, and act without fear or surveillance. It’s the foundation of creativity, dissent, and progress. Together, we can protect this essential right and ensure a future where privacy empowers us all.

Thanks for being part of this movement, everyone. This week I’m truly thankful and grateful to every one of you.

 

Yours in privacy,
Naomi

Naomi Brockwell is a privacy advocacy and professional speaker, MC, interviewer, producer, podcaster, specialising in blockchain, cryptocurrency and economics. She runs the NBTV channel on Rumble.

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https://nordictimes.com/tech/swedish-police-secretly-using-palantirs-surveillance-system-for-years/

Tech

Swedish police secretly using Palantir’s surveillance system for years

Mass surveillance

Published November 4, 2025 – By Editorial staff
Palantir Technologies headquarters in Silicon Valley.
2 minute read
Editorial staff
editorial@nordictimes.com

The Swedish Police Authority has for at least five years been using an AI-based analysis tool from the notorious American security company Palantir.

The program, which has been specially adapted for Swedish conditions, can within seconds compile comprehensive profiles of individuals by combining data from various registers.

Behind the system stands the American tech company Palantir, which is internationally controversial and has been accused of involvement in surveillance activities. This summer, the company was identified in a UN report as complicit in genocide in Gaza.

The Swedish version of Palantir's Gotham platform is called Acus and uses artificial intelligence to compile, analyze and visualize large amounts of information. According to an investigation by the left-wing newspaper Dagens ETC, investigators using the system can quickly obtain detailed personal profiles that combine data from surveillance and criminal registers with information from Bank-id (Sweden's national digital identification system), mobile operators and social media.

A former analyst employed by the police, who chooses to remain anonymous, describes to the newspaper how the system was surrounded by great secrecy:

— There was very much hush-hush around that program.

Rejection of document requests

When the newspaper requested information about the system and how it is used, they were met with rejection. The Swedish Police Authority cited confidentiality and stated that they can neither "confirm nor deny relationships with Palantir" citing "danger to national security".

This is not the first time Palantir's tools have been used in Swedish law enforcement. In the high-profile Operation Trojan Shield, the FBI, with support from Palantir's technology, managed to infiltrate and intercept the encrypted messaging app Anom.

The operation led to the arrest of a large number of people connected to serious crime, both in Sweden and internationally. The FBI called the operation "a shining example of innovative law enforcement".

But the method has also received criticism. Attorney Johan Grahn, who has represented defendants in several Anom-related cases, is critical of the approach.

— In these cases, it has been indiscriminate mass surveillance, he states.

Mapping dissidents

Palantir has long sparked debate due to its assignments and methods. The company works with both American agencies and foreign security services.

In the United States, the surveillance company's systems are used to map undocumented immigrants. In the United Kingdom, British police have been criticized for using the company's technology to build registers of citizens' sex lives, political views, religious affiliation, ethnicity and union involvement – information that according to observers violates fundamental privacy principles.

This summer, a UN report also identified Palantir as co-responsible for acts of genocide in Gaza, after the company's analysis tools were allegedly used in attacks where Palestinian civilians were killed.

How extensive the Swedish police's use of the system is, and what legal frameworks govern the handling of Swedish citizens' personal data in the platform, remains unclear as long as the Swedish Police Authority chooses to keep the information classified.

Editorial staff
editorial@nordictimes.com

https://nordictimes.com/tech/it-expert-warns-id-requirements-online-bring-us-closer-to-totalitarian-surveillance/

Tech

IT expert warns: ID requirements online bring us closer to totalitarian surveillance

Mass surveillance

Published November 3, 2025 – By Editorial staff
Swedish Liberal Party politician Nina Larsson wants to introduce age verification – but IT experts warn of serious consequences
2 minute read
Editorial staff
editorial@nordictimes.com

IT security specialist Karl Emil Nikka advises Sweden against following the UK's example of mandatory age verification on pornographic websites. The risk of data breaches and increased surveillance is too great, he argues.

Swedish Gender Equality Minister Nina Larsson wants Sweden to introduce technical barriers requiring age verification on pornographic websites to protect children from explicit sexual content.

The proposal is based on the British model where websites must verify users' age or identity, for example through authentication with ID cards or credit cards.

But Karl Emil Nikka, an IT security specialist, is strongly critical of the proposal. He points to serious flaws in the British solution, not least the risk of data breaches.

As an example, he mentions the leak from the messaging platform Discord, where photos of 70,000 users ended up in the wrong hands after a cyberattack in connection with the law change. Additionally, the barriers are easy to circumvent using VPN services, which caused the use of such services to skyrocket when the British law came into effect.

Risks surveillance

Nikka also warns that requirements for online identification bring Sweden closer to a type of surveillance that otherwise only exists in totalitarian states.

— It's a small problem as long as we live in a democracy, but it's damn dangerous to believe we always will, he says.

Instead, parents should be encouraged to use the controls already built into phones and other devices, where one can easily choose which sites to block.

— From a security perspective, it's the only reasonable solution, Nikka states.

Foreign sites attract

An additional risk with technical barriers is that young users turn to lesser-known foreign sites that don't care about legal requirements, Nikka argues. Jannike Tillå, head of communications and social benefit at the Swedish Internet Foundation, confirms this picture.

— According to experts in various countries, it seems that people have turned to other lesser-known websites abroad, she says.

However, Tillå believes that technical solutions can have a place, provided they are more anonymous than the British ones and combined with other measures.

— It can help raise thresholds and reduce exposure.

Conversations crucial

At the same time, she emphasizes the importance of complementing any technical solutions with investments in digital literacy and, above all, conversations between parents and children.

— That's where real protection begins. We know that many parents find it difficult to have the porn conversation, but you should do it early, says Jannike Tillå.

She stresses that the question of privacy and freedom online must not be set against child protection.

— We must find that balance and manage both things, she concludes.

Editorial staff
editorial@nordictimes.com

https://nordictimes.com/tech/safety-apps-normalize-surveillance-of-children/

Tech

Safety apps normalize surveillance of children

Mass surveillance

Published October 15, 2025 – By Editorial staff
Swedish researcher Katarina Winter warns that surveillance of children has become normalized when technology is packaged as care rather than control.
3 minute read
Editorial staff
editorial@nordictimes.com

Apps promised to increase safety are often used for everyday logistics – and normalize secret surveillance.

Researchers at Stockholm University have examined 48 Swedish safety apps and warn that the technology is packaged as care while ethical questions disappear.

In two research projects at Stockholm University in Sweden, researchers are investigating various safety technologies in Sweden – everything from digital safety maps and security sensors to apps marketed as tools for creating safer communities. But instead of measuring whether the technology works, the researchers critically examine its consequences.

— It's important to ask what kind of safety we're after, and for whom? What is worth calling safety? Which actors and interests determine what constitutes safety in a society? The project on safety apps shows, among other things, how surveillance becomes normalized when we use this technology, says Katarina Winter, associate professor and senior lecturer in criminology and doctor in sociology at Stockholm University.

She leads the projects, which are conducted in collaboration with researchers from the University of Gävle and Södertörn University. The researchers have mapped 48 Swedish safety apps and interviewed both developers and users, including parents who use apps to keep track of their children.

"The technology is so kindly framed"

A central finding is how normalized it has become to monitor children, often without their knowledge.

— One example is how normalized it has become to monitor your children even though they don't know about it, although some have an agreement with their children. Because the technology is so kindly framed – that it's about protecting the children – it doesn't become something you have to stand up for as a parent. The normalization can therefore happen under the radar. When technology is packaged as care, we easily lose sight of the ethical questions, she explains.

The surveillance also affects family relationships.

— Many use the apps to avoid nagging their children, and in the short term it may be convenient and simplify family logistics. But something happens on an interpersonal level, we cut off part of the interaction between each other. It's seen as deviant behavior if you don't want to share your location, which I think is negative.

Confusing messages during adult education center shooting

The researchers see a clear discrepancy between developers' ideals about a safer society and how the apps are actually used. For private individuals, it's often about completely different things than safety.

— In a way, these parents reproduce an insecurity in society related to crime and vulnerability when they justify why they use an app. But in reality, it's often extremely connected to everyday logistics – when should I start cooking the pasta depending on where my child is? explains the criminologist.

The researchers have also examined the school safety app CoSafe, which was used during the shooting at Campus Risbergska, an adult education center in Malmö, southern Sweden. The app was criticized for sending contradictory alerts about both evacuation (leaving the building) and lockdown (staying inside and seeking shelter). Of the total eleven people killed, two students followed the instruction to evacuate instead of seeking shelter indoors.

— The Risbergska case demonstrates the complexity of technical solutions for crisis situations. While the app may have helped some seek shelter, the incident raises important questions about responsibility distribution and technical reliability when it comes to life and death, Winter notes.

Private actors profit from insecurity

The researcher also sees how private companies use the public debate about insecurity to sell their solutions, particularly to municipalities.

— We have both a political landscape that focuses on insecurity and a market that takes it on because it's in focus. It's logical that opportunities for entrepreneurship are found in the societal debate we're in, but it becomes more brutal when it comes to safety than with other phenomena. Partly because actors profit from portraying society as unsafe, and partly because companies are generally interested in specific user groups that may not have many safety problems.

She calls for a critical attitude toward technological optimism.

— It's important to pause on these questions that otherwise tend to rush ahead in a kind of faith that 'now everything will be better because we have new technology'. When the overarching word is safety, questions about surveillance and privacy risk being deprioritized.

Editorial staff
editorial@nordictimes.com

https://nordictimes.com/the-nordics/norway/telenor-faces-lawsuit-over-human-rights-abuses-in-myanmar/

Norway

Telenor faces lawsuit over human rights abuses in Myanmar

Mass surveillance

Published October 7, 2025 – By Editorial staff
Telenor's information chief calls the demand a "PR stunt" and argues that the matter has already been handled by police and the judicial system.
3 minute read
Editorial staff
editorial@nordictimes.com

Over a thousand people may have been persecuted, tortured, arrested or killed when Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor handed over sensitive customer data to the military junta in Myanmar. Now victims and relatives are threatening to sue and demanding millions in damages.

On Monday, Telenor's management received a notice of lawsuit where the compensation claim is motivated by the telecom company illegally sharing sensitive personal data with Myanmar's military junta.

"We ask for a response on whether the basis for the claim is disputed as soon as possible, but no later than within two weeks", the letter stated.

Behind the claim stands the Dutch organization Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (Somo) together with several Myanmar civil society organizations.

After the military coup in February 2021, the junta forced telecom operators like Telenor to hand over sensitive information about their customers. The information was then used to identify, track and arrest regime critics and activists.

Politician executed

Among those affected is a prominent politician and Telenor customer, and after the company handed over the data, the man was arrested, sentenced to death and executed in prison.

— We know that the potential group of victims is more than 1,000 people, says Joseph Wilde-Ramsing, director and lead negotiator at Somo to Norwegian business newspaper Dagens Næringsliv.

He emphasizes that some of the victims are dead and executed, while several are arrested.

— We are in contact with their family members and demand financial compensation from Telenor for what they have been subjected to.

Claim worth millions

Lawyer Jan Magne Langseth, partner at Norwegian law firm Simonsen Vogt Wiig, represents Somo in the case. He states that the claim will be extensive.

— We have not yet set an exact figure, but there is little doubt it will amount to several hundred million kroner, he says.

Both individuals and organizations working for the democracy movement in Myanmar are demanding compensation.

— We have the number lists that were handed over to the junta, but we don't have all the names of the subscribers yet, says Langseth.

The notice establishes that Telenor systematically handed over personal data to the military junta, well aware that this would lead to human rights violations – including persecution, arbitrary arrests and elimination of opponents.

"This can be documented with extensive evidence", the document states.

Telenor: "No good choices"

Telenor's communications director David Fidjeland dismisses the matter and claims that the issue has already been resolved.

"The tragic developments in Myanmar have been the subject of several investigations within the police and judiciary without leading anywhere. Telenor Myanmar found itself in a terrible and tragic situation and unfortunately had no good choices", he writes in an email and continues:

"That journalists from Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur to Marienlyst [Telenor's headquarters in Norway] received this notice long before we ourselves received it unfortunately says something about where Somo has its focus. This unfortunately seems more like a PR stunt in a tragic matter than a serious communication".

Sold operations in 2022

Telenor received a mobile license in Myanmar in 2014. In a short time, the company became a major mobile operator with over 18 million customers in the country. After the military coup in February 2021, when the previous government was overthrown, Telenor chose to sell its mobile operations in Myanmar to Lebanese M1 Group – including customer data. The sale was completed in March 2022.

According to local media, M1 Group's local partner has close ties to the military junta.

Lawyer Langseth addresses the question of whether a refusal to hand over data would have affected local employees.

— The employees at Telenor Myanmar did not need to be involved. It could have been controlled from Norway or other countries in the group. Witnesses have told us that there was internal resistance among several of the key local employees at Telenor Myanmar against handing over data to the junta, he says.

Editorial staff
editorial@nordictimes.com

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